


Be Still

by crinklefries



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Childhood Friends, Illness, M/M, Marvel Universe, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 07:52:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7213999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crinklefries/pseuds/crinklefries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Be still / Wild and young / Long may your innocence reign<br/>Don't break character / You've got a lot of heart<br/>Be still / One day you'll leave / Fearlessness on your sleeve [The Killers]</p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>  <i>This, at his essence, is Steve Rogers. 93 pounds of pure, unadulterated principle and reckless bravery, fueled by a streak of stupidity not even Bucky can match. His golden hair, matted with grime and blood, shadowing one fierce, stubborn blue eye while he can barely squint through the other. A man who would risk his life--a life already hanging on by a thread--because he lacks the good sense to avoid standing up for what he feels in his big, stupid heart, to be right.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Be Still

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by "Be Still" by the Killers because I was listening to it on my commute one morning and thought well is there a sadder and more perfect song to describe Steve Rogers. 
> 
> The details/timeline don't perfectly match up to MCU, so think of it as slightly AU, I suppose.

**I. Be Still / Wild and Young / Long May Your Innocence Reign**

Once, when they’re young, they’re light as water. Two boys, Brooklyn-bred, limbs tangled together in lackadaisical ease, strong arms and long legs hopelessly caught between weaker arms and shorter legs, pale skin tanned and warmed from a day lazing in the sun. The war is a distant call and Steve’s parents are alive and when Steve coughs, Bucky can hear the rattle of his breath, starting near his pelvis and cautiously reverberating its way up his chest and throat, but Bucky can also hear his heart beat, shallowly, rapidly, but present. 

They’re twelve years old and unbroken, tragedy a distant thought unable to touch the skin between their knuckles. Steve’s knuckles are skinned anyway, remnants of another fight, another ill-conceived attempt to prove himself, to show he’s bigger than the body he’s been given.

Bucky laughs at nothing in particular and reaches over, running this thumb over the scraped skin.

“Your ma’s gonna kill you,” he muses, too young to contemplate the importance of these words, that Steve has a mother, that she’s at home, breathing, in her favorite red polka-dotted apron, blonde hair tucked behind her ears, patting the top of Steve’s favorite apple pie, leaving thumbprints he’ll spend his entire life missing.

“I won’t tell if you don’t tell,” Steve grins, turning onto his side to face Bucky.

There, under the thickly beating sun, the water lapping against rocks, a breeze ruffling through their hair, their quickly browning bodies on the tin roof of their favorite warehouse--a place only Steve knew about until there was Bucky, a place he’d come, alone, to watch the water and hear the thin beats of his pulse against the translucent skin of his wrist--they carry a secret between them, two grinning boys as attached in spirit as in limb.

“Your jaw’s bruised, stupid,” Bucky rolls his eyes. He reaches forward, presses an index finger against the blossoming blue-black shadow and Steve winces. “Can’t you pick fights with people your own size?”

Steve’s quiet for a moment, watching Bucky contemplatively. He turns onto his back, sticks his skinny arms under his head, bruised knuckles and all.

“No one my size,” he says wryly.

Bucky rolls his eyes again and then flips onto his back as well.

Around them, the sound of the docks thrums, the energy of men and women living, surviving--surviving age, surviving heartbreak, surviving life--the quiet rustle of water against wood, the metallic thuds of ships docked and climbed upon.

“Let’s jump,” Steve suddenly says.

Bucky, whose eyes have lazily closed, opens one, raising an eyebrow.

“Jump?”

“Into the water.”

“From here?”

“Why not?” Steve demands. He sounds angry, upset, hungry in the way he always sounds when he realizes he’s too small, too weak, that God, in his infinitely mysterious wisdom, had created a boy with too much spirit for body.

“Hey, hey,” Bucky says. Reaching out, he presses a palm to Steve’s upper arm, stills him. Steve’s skin is cool. Steve’s skin is always too cool.

Steve looks at him, earnest and frustrated. Livid.

It’s a stupid idea.

But, after all, Bucky’s only twelve and Steve’s only twelve and the vision of youth is stunningly panoramic.

“Okay,” Bucky assents, grinning.

Steve’s hunger softens when he laughs.

They scramble to their feet, kicking off shoes, peeling shirts off thin frames. They stand at the edge, hot tin biting into the rough soles of their feet.

“Ready?” Steve asks, extending a hand.

“Don’t tell  your ma,” Bucky grins, taking it.

 

Later, Steve catches the cold of his life, a wicked thing, illness rattling through his trachea, eyes watery with the flash pain of being simultaneously hot and cold. Bucky presses a thumb against cold, healing knuckles, and feels like the worst person in the world. 

But that’s later. In that moment, hand in hand, the only consequence to them, to two boys from Brooklyn, is that the water isn’t warm enough. And that they might be late for a slice of Sarah’s pie.

 

  
**II. Like shells on the shore / And may your limits be unknown  
** **And may your efforts be your own / If you ever feel like you can’t take it anymore**

  
When Steve feels ill, Bucky can feel it on his own skin, an uncanny, unsettling stillness, like the energy of life caught, muffled under a thick blanket. Steve will never say anything, the stubbornness of spirit fighting the reality of breaths taken too sharply, of joints that click when they should whir. He sits on the armchair, skinny legs curled up under knobby knees, a slightly emaciated spaghetti of bones and muscle, a light blanket cast about shaking shoulders. Sweat appears between furrowed brows, light lines drawn together in concentration. His shoulders shake, but his hands do not. When Steve is ill, Bucky knows, because Steve will draw.

The first time Bucky found him like this, lost in memory and a miasma of illness, Steve’s skin was so hot it burned Bucky to touch. Nearly delirious with fever, Steve ignored his friend’s protestations, his urgent call to crawl into bed, to find medics to help. On his lap was a small sketch pad, creamy paper filled with charcoal drawings of one thing, all the same thing--the rough, latticed circles of apple pie.

Bucky, squatting in front of his friend, frowned, resting a hand on Steve’s hand, a pencil gripped so hard his fists were turning diaphanous.

“She’d make me soup,” Steve said, eventually, too soft, blankly.

Steve would spend his entire life missing her and Bucky would never forget her name.

“What kind, pal?” Bucky asked quietly.

Steve looked at him with fevered eyes, a loss so deep Bucky felt it in the pit of his stomach.

“Chicken noodle.”

“Hey, yeah,” Bucky said. “All right.”

Bucky made Steve chicken noodle that night and he would make it every night after when he came home to find Steve, huddled on the armchair, blanket wrapped around his shoulders, drawing pad on his lap.

 

It wasn’t always pie. Sometimes it was the ocean, sometimes it was a car, one Bucky faintly remembered, driven by a tall man with a gentle smile and Steve’s kind, bright blue eyes. It was a false memory. Steve’s father had died before he was born. Other times it would be an anchor, an anvil, a ball and chain, as though Steve could feel himself sinking, but couldn’t find a better way to admit it. 

 

Tonight, it was a ship. And a plane. A train speeding along tracks on its way to everywhere.

 

When Steve is sick, after he’s had his chicken noodle soup and Bucky has tucked him into bed, Bucky carefully climbs in too, resting gently on top of the thin, scratchy blanket, palm reaching out occasionally to press into Steve’s burning forehead.

“Hey pal,” Bucky says after he’s climbed on, carefully giving Steve the room he needs.

“Buck,” is the only word Steve manages. His voice is barely audible.

Bucky’s stomach clenches and unclenches. He breathes in and out through his nose, swallowing past the burn near the back of his throat.

“You feeling better yet? I need you to feel better, Steve,” Bucky says. There was a constant push and pull--what Steve needs versus what Bucky needs--an endless pendulum that seemed tilted, skewed in a manner that gave neither what he needed.

“‘cause we’re gonna go everywhere,” Bucky assures his best friend. He presses his palm to Steve’s shoulder, feels the hot skin through the thin t-shirt, holds still the trembling Steve can’t hide. “We’re gonna get on a boat, just you’n me and set sail.”

Steve doesn’t reply, but his eyelids flutter.

“We’re gonna greet the world, you’n me.”

Steve seems to be listening, so Bucky talks, like he always does when Steve is sick, talks about the ocean and the sky and all of the dreams and adventures they’ll have in between. They’re still young and the young don’t die, so Bucky tells Steve about Europe and Asia and Africa and he tells Steve about the stars in the sky and he tells him about college, about the parties they’ll go to, the dames they’ll kiss, and the tests they’ll fail--he, Bucky, not he, Steve, who would pass everything with flying colors--and he tells him about the successful careers they’ll have and how wealthy they’ll be, with friends, and families, and they’ll live next door to one another, until they’re old and Bucky has to hit Steve with a walking stick because Steve’s said something oblivious to his wife again. Bucky brushes a hand across Steve’s sweaty forehead and he tells him that he still has the world to prove himself to, an entire world waiting to see what Steve Rogers has to offer it.

 

And because he’s Steve, he’s never forgotten.

And because he’s Bucky, he’s never told Steve otherwise.

  
  


**III. Don’t break character / You’ve got a lot of heart / Is this real or just a dream?  
** Rise up like the sun / Labor till the work is done  
  


The day Bucky finds him, doubled over, bloody, black eyes, blood on his lips, an arm bent just wrong enough, his heart comes to a stuttering halt. Steve is crumpled on himself, still for long enough that Bucky thinks this is it, this is the one time, if it wasn’t his heart that gave in, it was the rest of him. 

_ I couldn’t save his heart and I couldn’t save him _ , he thinks, blankly.

Then he moves, flutters, panting, wincing. He groans a small, pathetic sound, like a cat mewling because its milk bowl is just out of reach. His unbent arm he clutches to his stomach, reedy clothes covered in filth, specks of red, torn in large gashes. Then he moves, rises again, slowly, one knee up, one hand on his knee, bones lifting a body that can barely sustain itself. His palms are curled into fists, a blue vein pulsing on his neck from effort. Golden hair plastered to the side of his face, sticking in clumps to the sweaty sheen of his neck. There’s blood there too.

That’s when Bucky sees red.

The other young man is grinning, cocky, licking his bruised knuckles like it’s an afternoon delight.

Bucky surges forward, snaps, unthinking, momentarily an anchorless force of momentum, mass times velocity equals as much pain as he’s able to inflict. His dock hat falls to the ground, fist out, fist bunched, fist making contact with the side of a jaw with so much force he hears a sickening crack.

“What the f--” the other young man begins, but can’t get the syllables out before Bucky’s on him again, blow after blow, fist after fist, into his neck, his shoulder, his ribs, his stomach. He misses his mouth by an inch and goes back for seconds. 

The other man throws his arms up, blocking, but there’s no blocking the onslaught of Bucky’s untempered, unrestrained fury, a raw, primal need to feel flesh against his teeth.

“Hit him again!” Bucky yells, feels the words tear from his throat. “Try to hit him again!”

“Bucky,” he hears choked out, but he’s got his hands clamped to the other man’s shoulders, has him thrown to the ground, has him begging for mercy in a way Steve never would.

“Buck,” Steve’s voice comes, raw, urgent, pressed with anxiety and need. “Bucky,  _ Buck _ .”

Thin hands grip his shoulders, spidery, but firm, force him back off the other man onto his feet, stumbling back into Steve’s chest, where Steve traps him, wraps him in unshakeable arms, Steve’s heart hammering into Bucky’s chest.

 

Steve drags him away, which Bucky has no memory of, and it’s not until he’s being forced up the stairs to their apartment, not until Steve’s sat him at the edge of his bed, has damp cotton pads pressed to his fists and, inexplicably, to a place high on his cheek, that Bucky starts laughing. It’s his laughter--high, cold, unkind, angry--or Steve’s exhaustion or maybe Steve’s own injuries, blooming in sharp reds and blacks and blues and browns, that makes Steve visibly cringe.

His right eye is nearly swollen shut.

“Do you want to die?” Bucky spits out, furious.

Steve frowns. His lips are swollen to three times their normal size, purple, grotesque.

“Buck, it wasn’t like that this time,” Steve says, but it’s the wrong thing to say and by the look on his face, he knows it.

“ _ This time _ ,” Bucky laughs again, guttural, unnatural. He glares angrily at Steve, the heat of temper pooling in the back of his throat and at the bottom of his dark eyes. “What about next time, Steve? Or the time after that? When’s it gonna be enough? When I hafta stick you in the ground with your parents?”

Through his fury, he can’t say the words he means, which are  _ how could you _ and  _ do you want to leave me so badly? _

“He was harassin’ a gal, Buck,” Steve says quietly, his mouth set firmly.

This, at his essence, is Steve Rogers. 93 pounds of pure, unadulterated principle and reckless bravery, fueled by a streak of stupidity not even Bucky can match. His golden hair, matted with grime and blood, shadowing one fierce, stubborn blue eye while he can barely squint through the other. A man who would risk his life--a life already hanging on by a thread--because he lacks the good sense to avoid standing up for what he feels in his big, stupid heart, to be right.

“What’m I gonna do?” Bucky asks in laughter--a lower laughter now, helpless, sad, still lacking mirth--burying his face in his hands.

What he means is:  _ what am I going to do without you, one day? _

There’s a pause where all he hears is the rasping of labored breaths.

Then Steve reaches forward, tugs Bucky’s hands off of his face with long fingers, and doesn’t let them go.

“Hey,” Steve says. “I’m sorry.”

And he was, Bucky knew. But not for the fight, not for getting hurt, not even for the consequences that could have followed.

Here, too, was Steve Rogers: never apologetic for his principles, but sorry, so sorry, for causing Bucky any pain at all.

“Bucky?” Steve says again. He intertwines his fingers with Bucky’s own. “I mean it. I’m sorry.”

It’s  _ I’m sorry _ until there’s no body left to say I’m sorry for. There’s no anger left in Bucky now, only a deep sense of futility.

“I feel like I’m chasin’ your mortality, Stevie,” Bucky says, but doesn’t explain.

He sighs, lets his fingers rest in Steve’s own, then squeezes and pulls back.

“You look terrible,” Bucky finally says and Steve offers a tentative smile. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Steve’s shoulders slump slightly, like a weight has been lifted from them. Like Bucky’s anger, his ire, his entire being weighs heavily on Steve Rogers.

“Don’t tell my ma,” Steve says, cracking what grin he can manage. He winces, breathes out through his nose, which comes out as a high whistle. It’s the most pathetic sight Bucky has ever seen.

“‘m gonna kill you myself next time,” Bucky mutters as he begins gently scrubbing at the dried blood on Steve’s jaw with a wet cloth.

“Please, Barnes,” Steve says with a lopsided smile. “You’d be nothing without me.”

Bucky pauses the dabbing for a heartbeat, momentarily, held still.

 

Steve always was intuitive in the most oblivious way possible.

**  
**  


**IV. Be still / One day you'll leave / Fearlessness on your sleeve  
**   


When they hear the siren call them to war, they’re in an art class. Steve has the unparalleled ability to make him, Bucky Barnes, do almost anything that he, Bucky Barnes, would never otherwise in his life consider. Steve, who is artistically gifted, tells Bucky, who is decidedly not, that art is a good way to channel aggression, which Bucky finds slightly hysterical, since Steve Rogers has more pent up aggression in his tiny five-foot-six-inch, 93 pound frame than men twice his height and size.

They sit in class, a bowl of fruit--it’s always a bowl of fruit, Bucky thinks with disdain--in between them. Steve’s rendering of the fruit is colorful, bright, a faintly otherworldly quality about a still life that still resembles exactly what it’s meant to be. Bucky’s bowl of fruit, on the other hand, resembles a five year old’s fever dream. His apple is a square and his banana is an octagon. He tried to paint his plum purple and it ended up a green-blue. Steve is halfway through applying a second layer of carefully chosen color--color high in his cheeks as well, two brushes of pink against white skin, laughter withheld at Bucky’s disastrous masterpiece--when the radio interrupts his train of thought.

_...war, they’re calling it another World War. The United States has declared itself against Germany, against Adolf Hitler’s reign of terror. The President has joined allied forces to combat tyranny, to bring bring democracy and end the Nazi regime. We need all able-bodied young men, brave, ready to sacrifice themselves for their country, for freedom, ready to fight against the tyranny of evil. America needs you. _

Bucky can see the color drain from Steve’s face, the words prickling under his skin, one by one, absorbed by a heart enlarged by an overly developed sense of valor. Steve’s breathing slows--one breath, and then another, a pause, one after that--his eyes widen, blue pupils expanding, and Bucky thinks he can almost hear the words on Steve’s lips as he puts the paintbrush down, as he inclines his head toward Bucky.

_ I don’t like bullies, Buck _ , he can hear Steve say in his head.  _ And Adolf Hitler--well he’s the biggest bully of ‘em all. _

More than that, Bucky can feel it too. It radiates from Steve, but it’s the sort of radio missive that’s designed to crawl into the bloodstream, that’s meant to spark a fire into a chamber in the heart, the right ventricle for patriotism, the left ventricle for freedom, the veins to pump a steady stream of fire through the body,  _ your country, your country, your country _ . 

Bucky reaches out a hand, presses his fingertips to the top of Steve’s wrist, smudging red and blue paint on white skin. Steve looks down, staring, and laughs. He laughs and Bucky laughs because it’s a sign, it’s their siren call, they’re both giddy with anticipation. To serve a purpose larger than themselves. 

To fight the biggest bully of ‘em all.

 

But it never works out the way they planned, not with Steve. 

“My father died in the first World War,” Steve says, plaintively, to the third recruiter to say no to him, the third man to rake his eyes over his body sympathetically--in a way that makes Bucky’s blood boil, in a way that hurts Steve and makes Bucky’s fingers curl into his palm, nails biting skin--and shakes his head.

“Kid, I’m sorry. You’re just not army material.”

Which is, perhaps, a tactless and hurtful way of saying what they both know, what all three of them know, that a sick boy from Brooklyn, all of 91 pounds--because shortly after his second attempt to enlist, Steve caught the flu and lost two more precious pounds where he barely had any to give before--and a weak heart could never, would never, be able to serve his country in the U.S. army.

 

Bucky is accepted almost immediately. 

“You have to go,” Steve tells him when Bucky frowns, doubt clear between his blue eyes. Steve puts his hands to Bucky’s shoulders, Bucky wearing the army-issued uniform, trying it out before he ships off to training, the corners fitting him just right. Steve has to reach up to touch him there, at the corner, his face strained, his pallor accentuated, but his eyes bright, earnest, sad for himself, but happy for his friend, for the country that deserved his friend.

Bucky wants to fight the war, wants to this for himself, for once, but he wants to stay here and fight for his best friend, too. Steve was always two steps from death and Bucky always one step behind him. Now Bucky would be one step ahead and Steve three steps behind and in a funny sort of way, neither of them knew who would reach death first.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Bucky says, making him promise. He grasps Steve’s hands in his own, takes his fingers between his, holds both sets of hands up to his chest. They can both feel Bucky’s heart, steady, strong, decisive in a way that was foreign to Steve’s own. “Promise me, Rogers.”

“I’m going to find a way,” Steve says, by way of response. He has that firm set to his mouth, that intrenchant quality that greater men have tried and failed to move. “I’m going to be there with you, fighting for what’s right.”

“That’s what I mean by stupid, stupid,” Bucky says.

Steve frowns, his eyebrows furrowed.

Bucky rolls his eyes, leans forward and runs a thumb up the ridge of Steve’s nose and in the valley between his eyebrows, stills the concentration there. Steve’s expression softens.

It tugs in him, in Bucky, Steve, this feeling, the anxiety, the sadness.

It’s two inches, the distance between them.

Sometimes, it feels like an ocean.

  
  
One day, Bucky will cross a lifetime to draw Steve’s fearlessness to himself, to press hope and health into those lips. For now he gives Steve a lopsided smile.

“Till the end of the line, Stevie,” he says.

“Till the end of the line, Buck,” Steve breathes.

 

  
  
**V. Be Still / And go on to bed / Nobody knows what lies ahead  
** **And life is short / To say the least / We’re in the belly of the beast  
**   


Bucky doesn’t die, this time. He comes back a sergeant, a smile that crosses between easy and haunted on a charming, handsome face. He has muscles, his hair has grown just enough to seem long under his hat. His uniform is crisp, the bright lapels on army brown adding confidence to a young man who’s never needed any. There are whole nights he forgets, nights under the stars, nights laughing with the Howling Commandos, telling dirty jokes and forgetting the whistle of bullets in their ears, nights spent sitting with the sick and wounded, thinking about the time he and Steve went out dancing with a pair of dames, remembering how he and Steve ended up sprawled against each other, pricks of starlight spread out above them. 

It takes a war for Bucky to realize what he had always wanted to fight for was not his country, but a country worthy of Steve, a country that Steve could fight for. The war isn’t over, but Bucky comes back, resting for a moment, before shipping out to England. 

 

Bucky comes back and Steve is in the hospital, with the worst round of pneumonia he’s had yet, his hands cold, his eyelids dark, cheeks hollow. His blond hair glistens in the sunlight that streams into the room, but his body feels like a corpse.

Bucky thinks he fought in a war and he’s going to lose the war in this room, in this hospital bed, clutching the hand of the person he’s always loved the most in this world.

“Steve,” Bucky whispers, chants under his breath, like a prayer. “Stevie, do you hear me? I’m back. I came back for you, pal.”

Steve doesn’t answer.

“I told you not to do nothin’ stupid.”

He doesn’t answer that day or the next or the day after that. Bucky’s sergeant uniform collects in the corner, his hat set precariously, forgotten, on a flower pot that the nurse brought a week ago to introduce life in a room of death. He thinks, life is too long for some, and too short for others, and Steve’s body is almost still, existing far closer to the latter than the former.

  
  
Bucky thinks, this has been his war all along, the fight for Steve’s health, the war for his life. He enlisted before he was ready and he’s never known how to keep fighting the battles he almost loses. He’s alone in Steve’s room most days, although Gabe drops by, and Morita, and Dernier, and even Dum Dum. None of these men know Steve personally, but they know enough about him, know that the dark bags under Bucky’s eyes say he might be the greatest man who’s ever lived. 

  
  
Bucky leaves only to bring back Steve’s favorite snacks, three bags of candy bars, a portable radio, the newspaper, books that he thinks he would like to read, drawing pads, colored pencils, some magazines, and a dumb toy, recently invented, that was a multicolored spiral that slunk over itself in clacking noises, over and over, up and down stairs, or just across two palms. He thinks of the stories he’ll tell Steve--like when Dernier almost shot himself in the foot trying to clean his gun, or when Dum Dum tried to make a pass at one of the nurses and the nurse ended up shoving a medical bag with mud in his face or how, strangely, Gabe and Morita didn’t seem to care that almost everyone knew they were sleeping together.

_ They were together, Steve _ , Bucky thinks of himself telling his best friend.  _ And you know what? No one fuckin’ cared. _

He thinks of what he’ll remind Steve about: of Europe and Asia and Africa and the sky and the stars and all of the promises he’s ever made him, doubled now, with a bowl of chicken noodle soup every day if he would just wake up, if he would just come back to him.

  
  
But life isn’t a fairytale, James Buchanan Barnes learns. And for every day that Steve’s eyes flicker open, that he takes a steady breath, that his fever breaks, there are two bad days, sometimes three, and he’s lost so much weight he’s more bones than boy.

He’s failed, Bucky thinks. He’s only ever been good at keeping Steve alive and now he’s good for nothing at all.

  
  
It’s a Friday afternoon and he sits on the armchair, the portable radio playing softly in the background. Every once in awhile the gentle music is interrupted by a report from the front. The Allies are winning, always winning! Hitler is losing, always losing! Bucky listens distantly, blearily, the war another lifetime entirely.

He has a light blanket across his shoulders, his legs curled up under him. He has a sketch pad sitting across his lap and a colored pencil in his hand.

What he’s drawing, he doesn’t know. Latticed pies and oceans and bombs dropping from the sky. Candy bars he and Steve have shared, a warehouse with a tin roof, bright blue eyes he would know by heart.

He hears a weak voice clear, but he thinks it’s the radio. He thinks he might be delirious in his heartache.

“I said, do you need some chicken noodle soup?”

Bucky’s heart stills.

He looks up from where he’s sitting, pencil poised above an exaggerated eyelash.

Steve is looking at him, tired, exhausted, thin as paper, but with a smile that glimmers of the past.

The drawing pad and pencil clatter to the ground.

He’s at Steve’s side in half a beat, hand tangled with hand, fingertips pressing almost too hard against brittle bone that could snap if he’s careless. He doesn’t notice. He doesn’t notice that Steve’s wrapped his fingers through Bucky’s, that color is returning to the high points of his cheek.

What he notices is that Steve’s eyes are open. What he notices is that Steve is alive.

“You talk a lot,” Steve says, weakly. His voice is hoarse, throat fallen into disrepair from lack of use. “I heard everything.”

Bucky brings their hands up to his mouth, kisses Steve’s fingers, feels light and heavy, his chest full of scrap metal.

“You’ve changed, Buck,” Steve whispers.

Bucky laughs and it’s watery, despite himself.

“You haven’t changed at all, stupid,” Bucky says.

Steve tries to grin, but can’t quite make it. He winces.

“‘sbetter than the time you threatened to kill me.”

“Times, Rogers,” Bucky says. “Time _ s _ .”

Steve isn’t strong enough to reply, but Bucky nods anyway. He sits on the bed next to him and starts telling him stories, tells him about the army, about the war, about the Howling Commandos, about Europe, about Asia, about Africa, about the stars. He tells Steve there’s a cure for this, that there’s a serum he’s heard about, that America is winning the war, that soon, everything will be okay again.

  
  
He’s not supposed to, but with what strength he has left, Steve shifts over, leaves just enough room for Bucky on the bed.

“Gabe and Morita, huh?” Steve whispers. 

Bucky’s lightheaded.

He lies down next to Steve, next to his best friend, and turns on his side toward him, careful to give him the space he needs.

Steve doesn’t have the energy, but makes a small noise at Bucky. Bucky, in turn, carefully reaches over, helps turn Steve onto his side so they’re facing one another, nose to nose, forehead to forehead.

“Can’t you catch pneumonia?” Steve whispers.

“You can catch a lot of things,” is Bucky’s answer.

“You’re stupid,” Steve admonishes.

“Stevie,” Bucky says. “You’ve gotta get better, you know. We have too much to do. You have the entire world to prove yourself to.”

“You’ve never told me otherwise,” Steve says in response.

  
  
They look at one another, two boys from Brooklyn, two wars and a life between them.

Steve reaches a hand up and rests it on Bucky’s cheek. His skin is warm, for once. Miraculous. 

“Let’s jump,” Steve says. He looks hungry, but it’s a different sort of hunger. A lazy kind. Less desperate and more full of understanding and warmth, like a hot bowl of chicken noodle soup.

It’s not the stupidest idea.

After all, Bucky’s no longer twelve, and Steve’s no longer twelve, and life is fleeting in a way death never is.

Bucky tilts his head forward, presses his lips against Steve’s mouth.

He rests his hand in Steve’s hair, brushing back sweat and illness, promising him a lifetime of candy, portable radios, the newspaper, books Steve wants to read, drawing pads and colored pencils, magazines, and dumb toys just to see Steve laugh.

His hand in Steve’s hair, Steve’s hand on his cheek, they lie together, calm, whole, still. 


End file.
